Hazy buildings popped from the horizon, and soon a sign said
Sulphur City Limit
. The Explorer slowed, encountering traffic lights and pedestrians for the first time. The buildings were single-story red brick, the streets cracked and patched.
“Quiet town,” Emily said.
“Everyone’s inside watching the game. We don’t have much to look forward to around here except football.”
It all looked so normal—people chatting, going about their lives as if the world hadn’t just stopped and a child hadn’t been lost.
At the corner of South Cities Service Highway and Maplewood, he pulled over and hopped out. Opening her door, he held his hand to help her down.
“There’s the Rent-a-Car I told you about,” he said, pointing.
Overhead flickered a green
Enterprise
sign.
“And there’s the diner. The catfish is fresh.”
Sure enough, to the left, a restaurant called
The Cajun Kitchen
.
“Anything else I can do?” he asked.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Transportation is courtesy of Southland Field.”
“Can you accept tips?”
He grinned. “Always.”
Emily handed him a twenty, then turned away before he could say anything more, heading toward the diner.
* * * *
Tom watched her walk away. She didn’t look dangerous, but he wasn’t the one to make that determination. He reached into the van, opened the glove compartment and pulled out a cell phone. He frowned, dialing with his thumb.
“Hello, Jacques? Yeah, it’s me. I just drove a woman in, says she’s headed your way. She’s asking questions about Chastity Commune. Yeah, I thought it was interesting, too. No, she’s alone. She looks beat up. Yes, sir, I can. Be happy to. Yes, sir. I won’t let her out of my sight.”
* * * *
Fatigue dragged Emily’s steps like a physical weight. She approached the diner, pushing inside.
The crackly sounds of radio football greeted her. Several people looked up—part of a late lunch crowd that stayed to listen to the game. Emily chose a table near the window and stared out at the street. Seconds later, a waitress appeared.
“Are you still serving breakfast?” Emily asked, refusing a menu.
“All day long,” the waitress told her. She had a motherly face with a smile that lit her eyes. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll have a cheese omelet and a large orange juice.”
“Coming right up.”
Emily watched her walk away. She thought of her own mother and wondered if she should have called her parents to tell them about April. There hadn’t been time, of course. Besides, what would she say? She couldn’t tell them the truth. They’d never believe her. She’d only give them another excuse to call her an unfit mother.
She thought of Tom asking about her roots. Emily had been raised in Michigan, but she didn’t have family there anymore. Her parents lived in a retirement village in California. Emily’s childhood memories centered on her grandfather’s farm. He’s the one she should have called, she thought with a pang.
The waitress returned, setting a tall glass of OJ on the table. “Just passing through, hon?”
Emily looked at her. “I’m trying to find a place called Chastity Commune. Have you heard of it?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“I have,” said a man at the next table. “That’s them bunch of nutters down by Long Point Bayou.”
“Did someone say they’s looking for Chastity Commune?” a man asked from a few tables away.
“This woman here,” said the waitress.
“Well, I’ll be,” said the man. “You’re the second person in as many days asking for that place.”
Emily cleared her throat. “Someone else was looking for it?”
“Sure was. I remembers it clear ’cause the man came into my station. Only he wasn’t there for gas, all he wanted was a glass of water. He’s on foot, see? Tall guy. Lots of tattoos.”
EIGHTEEN
“T-tattoos?” Emily stared at the man two tables over. He must be mistaken. How could Joey be in Louisiana if he’d gone back to hell?
But if Joey
was
in town, there was a chance of getting him to take her to hell with him. For a moment, she considered how preposterous that sounded.
“Did you tell this tattooed man how to find Chastity Commune?” she asked.
“I gave him the general direction.”
“Can you tell me?”
He turned over his napkin. “Since you’re so pretty, I’ll draws you a map.”
Emily looked at the waitress. “Can I have that omelet to go?”
“Sure, hon.” The woman smiled. “Just give me a minute.”
The man giving her directions and the man who’d called Chastity Commune a
bunch of nutters
argued over the drawing of the map.
“She turns before then,” the nutters man said.
“She turns at the sign for Calcasieu Lake.”
“Right, and that’s before then.”
Emily gulped her orange juice, watching them. Joey must also be looking for Chastity Williams. If Emily found her first, maybe she could use that information as leverage. What a lucky turn—both people she needed to see in one place.
Why, though? Unease reared like an ugly snake. Why would Joey want to find Chastity after all these years? Vanessa said they didn’t see her anymore. She said the woman was pious. Joey, on the other hand, exuded malevolence and barely contained violence.
Had he come to harm the woman? Perhaps he knew Chastity had information Emily needed. Did he plan to stop her from talking?
“Here y’are.” The man slapped the decorated napkin before her, snapping Emily from her reverie. “Take Huntington Street to Ruth Street to Hackberry Highway.”
“That’s the slow way,” the nutters man said, peering over his shoulder.
The first man raised his voice, thumping the napkin with a thick finger. “That’ll get you to LA twenty-seven. Go south past Carlyss and into Hackberry. Twenty-seven becomes Main Street in town, but don’t pays that no never mind.”
“Right,” nutters said. “Just stay on the road.”
“Chastity Commune is betwixt Hackberry and the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge.”
“I can’t thank you enough.” Emily stood, picking up the napkin. It had a crude map in black ink on one side,
The Cajun Kitchen
printed on the other.
“I knows you, don’t I—from the TV?” The man blushed, making his balding head shine. “Yeah, I knows who you are. Some folks expect the bayou to be knee-deep in snakes and voodoo. I just wants you to know we ain’t all like that.”
“Is Chastity Commune into voodoo?”
He raised his beefy hands. “I’m a longtime member of Saint Peters down in Hackberry. That’s all I’m saying.” He returned to his table.
Emily looked at the other man.
“Bunch of nutters,” he said, sitting again behind his half-eaten hamburger.
Emily walked to the front, stopping at the register. The sound of the piped-in football game was louder there, and it was several moments before anyone noticed her.
“Can I have my bill?” she asked a man in a tie and short-sleeved shirt.
He thumbed through a stack of blue and yellow slips. The waitress pushed through a swinging door carrying a white paper sack. “Here you are, hon. I sandwiched the egg between the toast to make it easier to eat while you’re driving. And here’s a refill on your juice.” She snapped a plastic lid onto a Styrofoam cup.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Emily paid with a credit card and went outside. It was three o’clock. She looked at the bright blue sky and wondered when it got dark on Long Point Bayou.
Forty-five minutes later, she sat in a rented Subaru Outback, heading for LA 27. Traffic was light. She was soon out of Sulphur and into Carlyss.
Emily recognized buildings she’d passed on the ride up from the airport—an abandoned gas station with broken windows, a red brick home with a yellow porch. What she originally took to be a park turned out to be the Mimosa-Pines Cemetery. After a short time, she again saw Southland Field. A small plane flew toward the airstrip, coming in for a landing.
Of course, the napkin she taped to the dashboard held none of these landmarks—it showed a long straight line with hatch marks for intersecting roads and a blob of a lake to one side. The napkin fluttered in the breeze from the open window.
Emily needed the cool air. Her head bobbed and her eyes burned with lack of sleep. She drank half the orange juice, and then unwrapped the sandwich. The eggs were lukewarm. Strings of melted cheese dripped onto her chin.
From the side of the highway, a small sign announced
Hackberry City Limit, population 1699, Jacques LaRouge, sheriff.
Emily lowered her speed, searching for a gas station. She expected gas prices to be lower so near the oil fields, but they were just as high as up north. After paying at the pump, she bought an off-brand cola from a vending machine and continued driving.
As she’d been warned, the road changed to Main Street while in town, but returned to LA 27 beyond the city limits. She leaned toward the windshield, looking for dirt roads that matched the hatch marks on the map.
When the highway took a westward jog, Emily became alarmed. The line drawn on the napkin was straight. She argued with herself about whether or not to keep traveling when she saw a rutted turn-off and a sign that read
Calcasieu Lake.
She almost missed the road. She swerved off the pavement and skidded on gravel. The Subaru lurched over rocks and gullies. She gunned the engine, pressing forward.
Trees gathered tight; the sun darted through their shady canopy. She glimpsed water through the brush, but the road was dry and had steep banks.
Emily perked. This must be the right place. It wasn’t a mere fishing trail—it was a planned and maintained road, although barely wide enough to accommodate a single car. She wouldn’t have found it if not for the kind gentlemen at the diner.
Birdcalls drifted through her open window along with the heavy perfume of flowers and rich, moist loam. Moss hung from the trees. Occasional branches scraped her roof. A limb snapped off and bounced upon the hood. She yelped, thinking it was a snake. After that, she closed the windows.
Clearings leapt from the darkness of the trees as if spotlighted by slanting yellow sun. Candy wrappers and beer cans littered the brush. A couple of tires and a bullet-riddled refrigerator sat beside a
No Dumping
sign.
Emily drove slowly over the rough terrain, in and out of sunlight, looking for people. She saw a listing, wooden dock in the water and a dented aluminum boat upended upon the bank. But she saw no one around—no fishermen, no hunters, no tourists in airboats.
No Chastity Commune. Was she in the wrong place after all? Had she turned off the highway too soon? Too late?
The road ended at a circular clearing wide enough to turn her vehicle around. Emily hunched over the steering wheel, staring in disbelief.
“Damn it,” she whispered. “Damn it.”
She got out and slammed the door. Two cranes took flight with a thunder of wings. She glared at them. She hated the birds, hated everything in the world. The only bright spot in her life was April.
How could she get her daughter back?
A path beckoned her into the trees. It appeared cut from the foliage by dirt bikes. Heart thumping, Emily looked upward, trying to gauge how much daylight remained. The sky was blue, but the sun had dipped so low the clearing was in shadow.
She had to hurry.
She pulled the car around and aimed the headlights down the path. The battery would last about three hours. The light would act as a beacon to guide her back in case she didn’t find the hidden community.
But she had to find it.
Emily locked her backpack in the trunk and hurried down the trail. The headlights lit the area in bas-relief, and she soon revised her thoughts about dirt bikes. A person would be mad to ride through the area. Water stood on either side, black and still, and the path was little more than a spongy bridge between islands.
Bullfrogs bellowed. Crickets chirruped. She heard a splash and hoped it was a fish and not an alligator. Batting at mosquitoes and low hanging vines, Emily wondered if the men in the diner had sent her out there as a joke. There was no sign of habitation. The old fools might not have any idea where to find Chastity Commune.
Emily continued walking, all the while telling herself she should turn back. She was beyond the range of the headlights. Daylight barely reached through the trees. In the dimness, she stepped off the path twice, sloshing water into her boots.
The call of exotic birds made the bayou sound like a jungle. She heard a deep-throated growl and thought again of alligators. After a moment, she picked up a sturdy branch to use as a walking stick slash gator club.
“This is ridiculous,” Emily muttered as she trekked deeper into the swamp. She was going to get lost. She needed to spend the night in the car and start out again at first light. “Just a little farther,” she said in answer.
Her wristwatch was useless in the gloom, so Emily kept an eye on the sky as it turned from blue to gray. Tree limbs framed the view with black lace.
The sky was orange, the fireflies just coming out, when Emily found the first building.
NINETEEN
Emily walked through a silent village. She saw perhaps twenty-five buildings, some in the water and some on land. Moss grouted their wooden walls, and their roofs were thick with tar. A few homes were large enough to support porches and second stories, but most were no bigger than single rooms. All were on stilts with ladders leading to their doors.
“Hello?” called Emily.
She tripped over a piece of wood that turned out to be a signpost.
Chastity Commune.
This was it? This was what she came to find? Chastity Commune was a ghost town. Bewilderment and despair rose like a lump in her throat. “Hello? Anybody?”
What happened here?
Storm shutters framed the darkened windows she passed. Moldy, tattered curtains flagged their sills. She saw no candles, no faces peering outside. No one to question why she was in town.